> some still are

well that's an understatement[0].

I alos think it's less productive to interpret the phrase absolute evil as a comment on an entity's moral alignments (because it's a corporation, it's not chaotic evil or neutral good, it just is) but as a comment on the foundation and effects of the economic and political systems defining of the corporations (capitalism under neoliberalism). Absolute evil seems like a fairly decent personification of those metrics to me: every extra push to manufacture another product pushes us closer to a climate catastrophe (even 'green' products like Teslas, especially green products like Teslas[1]). Even if you deny climate change, you can't deny that workers are being taken advantage of near habitually. If we're going to personify the destruction of the earth and the worker, absolute evil does not seem too far off.

0: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foxconn_suicides for one 1: https://www.wired.com/2016/03/teslas-electric-cars-might-not...

There is still a big difference, between exploiting people - and owning people - and literal doing what you want with them. Flock them. Burn them. Rape them - as you please. This is slavery as it used to be (and partly still is!!). And that term gets watered down when applied to something else.

Exploiting people because they are desperate is a big problem. Maybe call it modern day slavery. But it really is not the same as what slavery means for people who are literaly and 100% owned by others.